Lot of issues with my desktop "I've got 99 problems..."

[chaksq]

Well my desktop has been giving me a lot of grief lately. I don't use it a whole lot so I've kinda been ignoring it. Most recently it got kicked out of a LAN party. Anyways I'll go through most of the issues I can recall offhand roughly in the order I noticed them.

First, I've been having issues with the computer dropping SATA drives for months. I know the drives are fine and not failing, just certain drives will dissapear while I'm using the computer and I can't access them. Sometimes a restart will fix it, sometimes I'll shut off and they'll be back when I boot a day or two later. This has happened to multiple drives, with no other signs of drive failure. Just to be safe I've backed up everything on the drives to an external and unplugged the drives. This issue has been present for over a year.

More recently I've noticed other issues. I've been having issues with video playback, play videos (720p) and after a while of smooth play the show keeps fragmenting and playback just quits, thought it might be corrupt files but copied to my laptop they play fine. Figured it might be a memory leak on my video card (Radeon HD 3850) so I got a barely used 8800GTS and replaced it. Performs better but similar playback issues still persist, card was working without any issue in other computers.

Then I went to copy some files to my external and the transfer rate was incredibly slow. It took over an hour for under 3gb of data to transfer. Which then took less than a minute to copy from the same external to my laptop.
The slow transfer rate made me think it might be the USB, but it's worked fine in the past. However I have had issues with the usb ports occasionally not recognizing peripherals I plug in since the start. Unplugging and changing ports a few times works.

Finally I went to a LAN party over a weekend recently, and the computer tripped the breakers there as soon as I plugged it in. It did this both on a circuit with a number of other computers on it, and it also tripped a breaker with only my computer on it. Needless to say my computer got kicked out of the LAN and I spent the rest of the LAN playing Minecraft on my netbook, not fun. At home both before and after the LAN party the computer starts fine without tripping any breakers in my apartment. The people running the LAN say they think I have a bad power supply or a short and this generally happens to a few people at each LAN.

Cliffnotes:
-SATA drives randomly cannot be accessed and show back up after restarts
-Poor video playback on HD graphics cards
-Extremely slow transfer rate
-Possible USB issues
-Computer trips breakers at a LAN party, no issues in my apartment

I'm a bit fed up. I'm really tempted to build a new rig however I'm saving money to buy a new car next spring or summer and therefore don't want to spend the money I'd need to in order to build a new rig the way I'd want. I'm fairly comfortable using only my laptop most of the time. However it's still a netbook and despite the dual core and Ion graphics it's not really suitable for all the games I like.

[slaveofconvention]

Definitely sounds like a power issue - I'd be testing that out first. The other thing that might be an issue is motherboard clearance. I'd check you have a clear line of sight down the back of the board - make sure nothing is touching or even close to touching the motherboard tray - close is still bad as things move a little when they warm up some...

[pcclan]

i would say replace the mobo and see if that does anything cause to me it sounds like a mobo issue with the southbrigde and maybe a cpu issue too

[msmrx57]

The video and slow transfer sound like some issues my desktop was having recently. My video card died awhile back and shortly thereafter I had playback issues., and with no programs or apps needing internet work it would tie up the network. I ended up formatting the os hard drive and doing a re-install and been fine since. For some reason XP seems to get buggy eventually. Of course thats just my 2 cents.

[x88x]

My first thought was failing NB, but the power makes me think slave's right; all of those problems could also be caused by a dying PSU. Do you have an extra PSU you could try?

[chaksq]

@slaveofconvention: I'll definately take a look at the mobo clearance. Granted this setup has been in a few different cases, and I've had the same issues in most of them.

@pcclan: I was thinking southbridge for a while but I'm going to look into the power supply first. If I'm going to get a new mobo I'd want to get one that supports AM3 and DDR3, which means I'd need a new CPU and RAM.

@msmrx57: I am running Windows 7, idk if I'd get similar bugs like in XP.

@x88x: Afraid I don't have a spare PSU, might go and buy one. I'll need it if I build a new rig anyways. I'd like to test out my current one and see how it's performing. I have a multimeter but I'm not sure how I should test the PSU I've got.

[SXRguyinMA]

my vote is PSU as well

[chaksq]

I borrowed a 450w PSU from a friend. Haven't had much of a chance to test it but I did install it. I started the computer up and left it running while I had some friends over and apparently it threw a BSOD after sitting awhile. Didn't get a good luck at the message so not sure what the error was.

[x88x]

Is it a good PSU? I had a cheap one once that came free with a $30 case (..yeah...it was bad) that was labeled as 400W but got outperformed by a 350W Kingwin I had.

[chaksq]

Is it a good PSU? I had a cheap one once that came free with a $30 case (..yeah...it was bad) that was labeled as 400W but got outperformed by a 350W Kingwin I had.

It's a Silverstone, can't remember the exact model but it's one of their painted black ones so not an into level.

[x88x]

Hmm, ok, they're pretty good. I'm gonna say it's likely not a PSU problem then. ...unless this one is bad too. :P

[chaksq]

Just out of curiosity would mismatched RAM be a possible cause? I forgot but my RAM 4x 1gb sticks, two have larger heat sinks but otherwise the RAM sticks had all the same specs. I could see that maybe causing some of the performance issues, but not the issue with tripping breakers.

[Technochicken]

I have mismatched ram, and have had no issues with it. If you do think the ram is the problem, run Memtest (http://www.memtest.org/). Have you done all the usual PC cleanup stuff, like updating drivers, clearing out temp folders, and, most importantly, running and antivirus scan and malwarebytes? Who knows, it may be a malware problem. Also, try clocking your CPU down to stock speeds if it is overclocked and see what happens. I've had issues with SATA devices because of an unstable overclock.

[chaksq]

I was running the mismatched RAM without issues, when I set it up I had run Memtest and tweaked the bios settings for the RAM. I keep up on the general cleanup stuff, will run a good test of it. I haven't over-clocked at all so should be any issues there. I did pull half the RAM (so only matched sticks now) and reassembled the computer with only the hardware it needs to boot and it seems to be running somewhat stable. So maybe it was the RAM, at any rate the computer is about 3 years old now so I'm thinking of building a new system around a Phenom II X4 970 BE once I save up some money.